Honours Cognitive Science

Program Requirement:

The Honours Cognitive Science, which is restricted to students in the B.A. & Sc., is an extension of the Interfaculty program and offers students an opportunity to undertake a research project in close association with professors in their main Arts and Science focus areas. Prior to selecting the Honours program, students should meet with the Interdisciplinary Program Adviser and review the B.A. & Sc. academic requirements for Honours and First Class Honours, which can also be found under "University Regulations and Resources," "Graduation," and "Graduation Honours."

To receive an Honours degree, students are required to achieve a minimum overall program GPA of 3.3 at graduation, and attain a grade of B+ (3.3) or better in COGS 444. Students must complete both the 60-credit Honours program and an approved minor concentration or a minor in the Faculties of Arts or of Science.

Note: B.A. & Sc. students who take interfaculty programs, including the Honours in Cognitive Science, must take at least 21 credits in Arts and 21 credits in Science across their interfaculty program and their minor or minor concentration.

Note: To receive approval to register for this course, a student must present a research proposal to the Director of the Cognitive Science Program. See https://www.mcgill.ca/cogsci/research/ for instructions.

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Fall 2019

Winter 2020

Instructors

There are no professors associated with this course for the 2019-2020 academic year

Mathematics & Statistics (Sci): Examples of statistical data and the use of graphical means to summarize the data. Basic distributions arising in the natural and behavioural sciences. The logical meaning of a test of significance and a confidence interval. Tests of significance and confidence intervals in the one and two sample setting (means, variances and proportions).

Offered by: Mathematics and Statistics

No calculus prerequisites

Restriction: This course is intended for students in all disciplines. For extensive course restrictions covering statistics courses see Section 3.6.1 of the Arts and of the Science sections of the calendar regarding course overlaps.

You may not be able to receive credit for this course and other statistic courses. Be sure to check the Course Overlap section under Faculty Degree Requirements in the Arts or Science section of the Calendar. Students should consult http://www.mcgill.ca/students/transfercredit for information regarding transfer credits for this course.

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Fall 2019

Winter 2020

Instructors

There are no professors associated with this course for the 2019-2020 academic year

Restriction: Not open to students who have passed a CEGEP statistics course(s) with a minimum grade of 75%: Mathematics 201-307 or 201-337 or equivalent or the combination of Quantitative Methods 300 with Mathematics 300

You may not be able to receive credit for this course and other statistic courses. Be sure to check the Course Overlap section under Faculty Degree Requirements in the Arts or Science section of the Calendar.

Restrictions: COMP 202 and COMP 208 cannot both be taken for credit. COMP 202 is intended as a general introductory course, while COMP 208 is intended for students interested in scientific computation. COMP 202 cannot be taken for credit with or after COMP 250

Linguistics: The course covers key concepts of speech science, including phonetics (acoustics, speech perception and production), fundamentals in the study of speech processing, speech development, and speech disorders, and introduces some basic methodologies of the field.

Offered by: Linguistics

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Terms

This course is not scheduled for the 2019-2020 academic year

Instructors

There are no professors associated with this course for the 2019-2020 academic year

Linguistics: A hands-on introduction to the strategies that natural languages use to convey meaning. Requiring no previous background in linguistics, the course surveys fundamental properties of word and sentence meaning and their interdependence with context. It provides an overview of the grammatical mechanisms that languages employ to construct the literal meanings of sentences from word meanings, explores how meanings are anchored to real life situations, and analyzes how meanings are routinely enriched in context by language users to convey more than what is literally expressed.

Philosophy: A course treating some of the central problems of philosophy: the mind-body problem, freedom, scepticism and certainty, fate, time, and the existence of God.

Offered by: Philosophy

Philosophy students may use either PHIL 200 or PHIL 201 towards their program requirements, but not both. Students may, however, take both for credit (using the second as an elective), as the content in PHIL 201 does not overlap with PHIL 200

Philosophy: An introduction to some of the major problems of philosophy. This course does not duplicate PHIL 200.

Offered by: Philosophy

Philosophy students may use either PHIL 200 or PHIL 201 towards their program requirements, but not both. Students may, however, take both for credit (using the second as an elective), as the content in PHIL 201 does not overlap with PHIL 200

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Winter 2020

Instructors

There are no professors associated with this course for the 2019-2020 academic year

Neuroscience: An introduction to how nerve cells generate action potentials, communicate with one another at synapses, develop synaptic connections, early brain development, and the construction of specific neural circuits.

Psychology: An introduction to contemporary research on the relationship between brain and behaviour. Topics include learning, memory and cognition, brain damage and neuroplasticity, emotion and motivation, and drug addiction and brain reward circuits. Much of the evidence will be drawn from the experimental literature on research with animals.

Psychology: Where do thoughts come from? What is the nature of thought, and how does it arise in the mind and the brain? Cognition is the study of human information
processing, and we will explore topics such as memory, attention, categorization, decision making, intelligence, philosophy of mind, and the mind-as computer
metaphor.

Offered by: Psychology

Winter

2 lectures, 1 conference

Prerequisite: One previous course in Psychology.

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Winter 2020

Instructors

Signy A Sheldon

Complementary Courses (30 credits)

30 credits selected as follows:

18 credits from one of the following lists: Computer Science, Linguistics, Neuroscience, Philosophy, or Psychology.

12 credits from any of the five lists.

Of the 30 credits Complementary Course credits, 15 credits taken must be at the 400 level or higher.

COMP 251 uses mathematical proof techniques that are taught in the corequisite course(s). If possible, students should take the corequisite course prior to COMP 251.

COMP 251 uses basic counting techniques (permutations and combinations) that are covered in MATH 240 and 363, but not in MATH 235. These techniques will be reviewed for the benefit of MATH 235 students.

Restrictions: Not open to students who have taken or are taking COMP 252.

Computer Science (Sci): A research project in any area of computer science, involving a programming effort and/or a theoretical investigation, and supervised by a faculty member in the School of Computer Science. Final written report required.

Offered by: Computer Science

3 hours

Prerequisites: 15 Computer Science credits.

Restriction: For Honours students, or non-Honours students with permission of the department.

Restriction: For students in any Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or Software Engineering programs. Others only with the instructor's permission. Not open to students who have taken or are taking MATH 235.

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Fall 2019

Winter 2020

Instructors

There are no professors associated with this course for the 2019-2020 academic year

Linguistics

Any course at the 300, 400 or 500 level from the department of Linguistics, or from the following list:

Linguistics: The course covers key concepts of speech science, including phonetics (acoustics, speech perception and production), fundamentals in the study of speech processing, speech development, and speech disorders, and introduces some basic methodologies of the field.

Offered by: Linguistics

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Terms

This course is not scheduled for the 2019-2020 academic year

Instructors

There are no professors associated with this course for the 2019-2020 academic year

Linguistics: A hands-on introduction to the strategies that natural languages use to convey meaning. Requiring no previous background in linguistics, the course surveys fundamental properties of word and sentence meaning and their interdependence with context. It provides an overview of the grammatical mechanisms that languages employ to construct the literal meanings of sentences from word meanings, explores how meanings are anchored to real life situations, and analyzes how meanings are routinely enriched in context by language users to convey more than what is literally expressed.

Offered by: Linguistics

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Fall 2019

Instructors

Luis Fernando Alonso-Ovalle

Philosophy

Neuroscience: An introduction to ethical issues arising from basic and clinical neuroscience. Overview of therapeutic, diagnostic, and research interventions in mental and neurological disorders, and their implications on society.

Philosophy: A survey of major positions of the mind-body problem, focusing on such questions as: Do we have minds and bodies? Can minds affect bodies? Is mind identical to body? If so, in what sense "identical"? Can physical bodies be conscious.

Philosophy: A second course in Logic. NB. The course will be technical in nature, and some mathematical aptitude is essential. The emphasis is on the expressive properties of standard logical systems, including implications for the philosophy of mathematics. We will study the Completeness of First-Order Logic, then the 'limitative' theorems of Tarski and Gödel.

Philosophy: This course provides an historically informed introduction to philosophy of mathematics. It gives the student an overview of prominent issues and arguments, to enable her to follow and discuss contemporary research in philosophy of mathematics.

Philosophy: A discussion of philosophical problems as they arise in the context of scientific practice and enquiry. Such issues as the philosophical presuppositions of the physical and social sciences, the nature of scientific method and its epistemological implications will be addressed.

Philosophy: An examination of selected works by Aristotle. The course considers issues in moral philosophy as well as those found in the logical treatises, the Physics and Metaphysics, and in the philosophy of mind.

Philosophy: A survey of eighteenth century philosophy, especially British philosophy. Attention is given to fundamental metaphysical, epistemological, and moral issues as reflected in the work of such philosophers as Locke, Shaftesbury, Berkeley, Hutcheson, Butler, Hume and Reid.

Philosophy: An introduction to the central questions in the analytic tradition, through the works of important early figures in that tradition. Philosophers to be discussed may include: Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Ramsay, Carnap and the "logical positivists".

Offered by: Philosophy

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Terms

This course is not scheduled for the 2019-2020 academic year

Instructors

There are no professors associated with this course for the 2019-2020 academic year

Philosophy: An examination of central notions in the philosophy of language (reference, meaning, and truth, e.g.), the puzzles these notions give rise to, and the relevance of these notions to such questions as: What is language? How is communication possible? What is understanding? Is language rule-governed.

Offered by: Philosophy

Prerequisites: PHIL 210 or equivalent and one intermediate course in philosophy

Philosophy: A discussion of central topics in the theory of knowledge. The questions addressed in the course may include: What is knowledge? Do we have any knowledge? What is the relation between knowledge and belief? When is belief justified? Is all knowledge conscious knowledge.

Offered by: Philosophy

Prerequisite: PHIL 210 or equivalent and one intermediate course in philosophy

Philosophy: An examination of central questions in metaphysics in their historical and contemporary forms. Topics may be chosen from such issues as: personal identity, the nature of space and time, the nature of events and properties, possible worlds, and the problem of realism.

Offered by: Philosophy

Prerequisites: PHIL 210 or equivalent and one intermediate course in philosophy

Philosophy: A study of phenomenology from a historical and thematic perspective. The course will typically involve the study of central thinkers such as Husserl, Heidegger, or Merleau-Ponty, with an examination of the nature and development of the phenomenological movement.

Offered by: Philosophy

Prerequisite: one intermediate course in philosophy

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Terms

Winter 2020

Instructors

There are no professors associated with this course for the 2019-2020 academic year

Psychology

Anthropology: The problem of knowledge; the nature of perception; the concept of mind; the relation between thought and language. The concept of meaning: communication, interpretation and symbolism. Social aspects of cognition; ideology.

Music Technology: Basic processes by which the brain transforms sound waves into musical events, dimensions, systems and structures and the processes by which musicians imagine new musical sounds and structures and plan movements that produce music on instruments.

Restriction: Not open to students who have passed a CEGEP statistics course(s) with a minimum grade of 75%: Mathematics 201-307 or 201-337 or equivalent or the combination of Quantitative Methods 300 with Mathematics 300

You may not be able to receive credit for this course and other statistic courses. Be sure to check the Course Overlap section under Faculty Degree Requirements in the Arts or Science section of the Calendar.

Psychology: An introduction to contemporary research on the relationship between brain and behaviour. Topics include learning, memory and cognition, brain damage and neuroplasticity, emotion and motivation, and drug addiction and brain reward circuits. Much of the evidence will be drawn from the experimental literature on research with animals.

Psychology: Where do thoughts come from? What is the nature of thought, and how does it arise in the mind and the brain? Cognition is the study of human information
processing, and we will explore topics such as memory, attention, categorization, decision making, intelligence, philosophy of mind, and the mind-as computer
metaphor.

Psychology: Contemporary and historical research and theory on animal learning approached from a behavioural, cognitive and biological perspective. Classical and instrumental conditioning, cognitive learning, and biological constraints. The status and history of North American behaviourism will be discussed and compared with cognitive and other approaches.

Psychology: An introduction to pain research and theory, with emphasis on the interactions of psychological, cultural and physiological factors in pain perception. The role of these factors in clinical pain and its management by pharmacological and non-pharmacological means will be discussed.

This course is required of all students who propose to enter an Honours or Major program in Psychology

You may not be able to receive credit for this course and other statistic courses. Be sure to check the Course Overlap section under Faculty Degree Requirements in the Arts or Science section of the Calendar.

Psychology: Introduction to the evolution and assessment of intelligence. Emphasizes measurement and correlates of the human intellect and the role of environment and heredity in social and race differences in intellectual and adaptive functioning. Evolution of intelligence in vertebrates and other intelligences including practical and emotional intelligence will be covered.

Psychology: The course is an introduction to the field studying how human cognitive processes, such as perception, attention, language, learning and memory, planning and organization, are related to brain processes. The material covered is primarily based on studies of the effects of different brain lesions on cognition and studies of brain activity in relation to cognitive processes with modern functional neuroimaging methods.

Psychology: A survey of issues in psycholinguistics, focusing on the nature and processing of language (e.g., how we understand speech sounds, words, sentences, and discourse). Also surveyed: language and thought, the biological foundations of language, and first language acquisition.

Psychology: This course will examine issues in bilingualism, including second language acquisition in children and adults, critical period hypothesis, cognitive consequences and correlates of bilingualism, social psychological aspects of bilingualism, and bilingual education.

Offered by: Psychology

Winter

2 lectures

Prerequisites: Introductory Psychology, and PSYC 340 or introduction to linguistics; or permission of instructor

Psychology: In-depth exploration of cognitive development in infants and children including knowledge representation and processing, conceptual development, language development, and theories and principles of cognitive development.

Psychology: The multi-disciplinary study of cognitive science, exploring the computer metaphor of the mind as an information-processing system. Focus on levels of analysis, symbolic modeling, Turing machines, neural networks, as applied to topics such as reasoning, vision, decision-making, and consciousness.

Psychology: Memory systems are studied with an emphasis on the neural computations that occur at various stages of the processing stream, focusing on the hippocampus, amygdala, basal ganglia, cerebellum and cortex. The data reviewed is obtained from human, non-human primates and rodents, with single unit recording, neuroimaging and brain damaged subjects.

Psychology: An introduction to cognitive properties and neural mechanisms of human attention. The material will include an overview of the history of attention research, contemporary theories of attention, the varieties of attention, behavioral and neuroimaging experimental methods, the nature of attentional dysfunctions, and the links between attention and other cognitive functions including memory and consciousness.

Psychology: Interdisciplinary study of decision-making, covering contemporary approaches to understanding how humans compute values and make choices. Measurement of and techniques for assessing variables such as risk and uncertainty, utilities and preferences, reinforcement learning, heuristics and biases, and self-control. Emphasis on quantitative models of decision-making.

Offered by: Psychology

Prerequisite(s): PSYC 212 or PSYC 213 and U3 standing; or permission of instructor

Restriction(s): Not open to students who have taken PSYC 562 in Winter 2017.

Psychology: Properties of nerve cells that are responsible for learning and memory. Recent advances in the understanding of neurophysiological, biochemical and structural processes relevant to neural plasticity. Emphasis on a few selected model systems involving both vertebrate and invertebrate animals.

Psychology: Anatomical, biochemical and physiological aspects of neurotransmitter systems in the brain, current theories of the function of these systems in normal and abnormal behaviour, and the actions of psychotropic drugs.

Psychology: We examine in detail the structure of the visual system, and its function as reflected in the perceptual abilities and behaviour of the organism. Parallels are also drawn with other sensory systems to demonstrate general principles of sensory coding.

Offered by: Psychology

Winter

2 lectures

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Terms

Winter 2020

Instructors

There are no professors associated with this course for the 2019-2020 academic year

Psychology: The course introduces basic concepts underlying structural equation models (SEM). SEM, which combine regression analysis and factor analysis, are quite useful and are currently very popular in analyzing data that arise in social, developmental and clinical psychology. The students are expected to get first-hand experiences in fitting SEM, and learn how to interpret and report the results from SEM.

Psychology: The statistical analysis of relations among a number of variables in situations common in psychology, ecology, and other fields. Methods include regression analysis, principal components analysis, and other techniques for modelling the structure of correlation matrices.

Psychology: The main challenges that cognitive science faces today, focusing on the capacity to learn sensorimotor categories, to name and describe them verbally, and to transmit them to others, concluding with cognition distributed on the Web.

Offered by: Psychology

Prerequisite(s): Student must have completed a 300 level course in one of the following: Linguistics, Philosophy, Psychology, Computer Science, or Neuroscience.

Neuroscience

Anatomy & Cell Biology: This course explores the functional organization of the human brain and spinal cord. The course focuses on how neuronal systems are designed to subserve specific motor, sensory, and cognitive operations.

Biology (Sci): The physical and chemical properties of the cell and its components in relation to their structure and function. Topics include: protein structure, enzymes and enzyme kinetics; nucleic acid replication, transcription and translation; the genetic code, mutation, recombination, and regulation of gene expression.

Biology (Sci): This course introduces the student to our modern understanding of cells and how they work. Major topics to be covered include: photosynthesis, energy metabolism and metabolic integration; plasma membrane including secretion, endocytosis and contact mediated interactions between cells; cytoskeleton including cell and organelle movement; the nervous system; hormone signaling; the cell cycle.

Biology (Sci): The relationship between animal behaviour and the natural environment in which it occurs. This course introduces the subject of ecology at the level of the individual organism. Emphasis on general principles which relate to feeding, predator avoidance, aggression, reproduction and parental care of animals including humans.

Biology (Sci): Introduction to communication between animals, including humans. Physical and phylogenetic constraints on the evolution of communication systems will be discussed. The approach to communication will draw from behavioural ecology, psychology, physiology and physics.

Offered by: Biology

Fall

3 hours lecture

Corequisites: BIOL 307 or equivalent and one of BIOL 306 or NEUR 310 or NSCI 200 or NSCI 201 or PHGY 311; or permission of instructor. Since all corequisites may not be offered in the same term, students are advised that they may have to plan their schedules so that they may register in these courses in the term prior to BIOL 507.

Biology (Sci): Properties of nerve cells that are responsible for learning and memory. Recent advances in the understanding of neurophysiological, biochemical and structural processes relevant to neural plasticity. Emphasis on a few selected model systems involving both vertebrate and invertebrate animals.

Biology (Sci): Discussions of all aspects of nervous system development including pattern formation, cell lineage, pathfinding and targeting by growing axons, and neural regeneration. The basis for these discussions will be recent research papers and other assigned readings.

Biology (Sci): This course will focus on recent research employing genetic-based methods to examine the functional and structural properties of the nervous system. The focus will be on approaches for studying neural circuits and behavior in a range of model organisms. Topics will include recent technological advances, such as optogenetics for modifying and controlling neuronal activity, and animal models of neurological diseases. Students will critically analyze the application of these methods to current research through in-class discussion of primary literature, student presentations, and written assignments.

Biology (Sci): Discussion of fundamental molecular mechanisms underlying the general features of cellular neurobiology. An advanced course based on lectures and on a critical review of primary research papers.

Neurology and Neurosurgery: A survey of the functional organization of nerve cells, signalling in the nervous system, and principles of neural development. Topics include cell polarity, neurotransmitters, neurotrophins, receptors and second messengers, cell lineage, guidance of axon outgrowth, and nerve regeneration. Emphasis will be placed on analysis of neurons at the molecular level.

Neuroscience: An introduction to how nerve cells generate action potentials, communicate with one another at synapses, develop synaptic connections, early brain development, and the construction of specific neural circuits.

Neuroscience: An introduction to ethical issues arising from basic and clinical neuroscience. Overview of therapeutic, diagnostic, and research interventions in mental and neurological disorders, and their implications on society.

Physiology: In depth presentation of experimental results and hypotheses underlying our current understanding of how single neurons and ensembles of neurons encode sensory information, generate movement, and control cognitive functions such as emotion, learning, and memory, during voluntary behaviours.

Physiology: Topics of current interest in systems neurophysiology and behavioural neuroscience including: the neural representation of sensory information and motor behaviours, models of sensory motor integration, and the computational analysis of problems in motor control and perception. Students will be expected to present and critically discuss journal articles in class.

Psychology: An introduction to contemporary research on the relationship between brain and behaviour. Topics include learning, memory and cognition, brain damage and neuroplasticity, emotion and motivation, and drug addiction and brain reward circuits. Much of the evidence will be drawn from the experimental literature on research with animals.

Psychology: An introduction to pain research and theory, with emphasis on the interactions of psychological, cultural and physiological factors in pain perception. The role of these factors in clinical pain and its management by pharmacological and non-pharmacological means will be discussed.

Psychology: The course is an introduction to the field studying how human cognitive processes, such as perception, attention, language, learning and memory, planning and organization, are related to brain processes. The material covered is primarily based on studies of the effects of different brain lesions on cognition and studies of brain activity in relation to cognitive processes with modern functional neuroimaging methods.

Psychology: The multi-disciplinary study of cognitive science, exploring the computer metaphor of the mind as an information-processing system. Focus on levels of analysis, symbolic modeling, Turing machines, neural networks, as applied to topics such as reasoning, vision, decision-making, and consciousness.

Psychology: This course covers basic biological mechanisms, possible functions and behavioural aspects of sleep. Additional topics include: disorders of sleep, their effects on behaviour and cognition, and treatment approaches; as well as medical, neurological and psychiatric disorders, and drugs, that affect sleep.

Psychology: An introduction to cognitive properties and neural mechanisms of human attention. The material will include an overview of the history of attention research, contemporary theories of attention, the varieties of attention, behavioral and neuroimaging experimental methods, the nature of attentional dysfunctions, and the links between attention and other cognitive functions including memory and consciousness.

Psychology: Properties of nerve cells that are responsible for learning and memory. Recent advances in the understanding of neurophysiological, biochemical and structural processes relevant to neural plasticity. Emphasis on a few selected model systems involving both vertebrate and invertebrate animals.

Psychology: Anatomical, biochemical and physiological aspects of neurotransmitter systems in the brain, current theories of the function of these systems in normal and abnormal behaviour, and the actions of psychotropic drugs.

Psychology: We examine in detail the structure of the visual system, and its function as reflected in the perceptual abilities and behaviour of the organism. Parallels are also drawn with other sensory systems to demonstrate general principles of sensory coding.

Offered by: Psychology

Winter

2 lectures

Symbols:

Terms

Winter 2020

Instructors

There are no professors associated with this course for the 2019-2020 academic year

Psychiatry: The phenomenology and epidemiology of the use and abuse of alcohol, nicotine, opiates, stimulants, sedatives and psychotomimetic agents are discussed in relation to current theoretical and experimental issues. The perspective is multidisciplinary and the intention is to develop an understanding of the nature of the issues surrounding drug dependence.

Psychiatry: Current theories on the neurobiological basis of most well known mental disorders (e.g. schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, dementia). Methods and strategies in research on genetic, physiological and biochemical factors in mental illness will be discussed. Discussion will also focus on the rationale for present treatment approaches and on promising new approaches.

Psychiatry: The course will focus on the transcendental importance of evolution of nervous systems for normal and pathological behaviour. Studies of allomeric brain growth and recent evolutionary theories of brain organization as they relate to normal and abnormal behaviour will be emphasized.

Restrictions: Priority will be given to graduate students registered in Psychiatry, Psychology or Neuroscience graduate programs. Open to undergraduates who have completed PSYT 301 or an equivalent course. Undergraduates must obtain permission of the instructors before registration. Not open to students who have taken PSYT 615.

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Terms

This course is not scheduled for the 2019-2020 academic year

Instructors

There are no professors associated with this course for the 2019-2020 academic year

Note: To receive approval to register for this course, a student must present a research proposal to the Director of the Cognitive Science Program. See https://www.mcgill.ca/cogsci/research/ for instructions.

Symbols:

Terms

Fall 2019

Winter 2020

Instructors

There are no professors associated with this course for the 2019-2020 academic year